High End Price for Low End Jewelry

Poorly designed and crafted jewelry is an emerging trend that is not a good one! I often hear an occasional cuss word from Dad or my brother emanating from the back room workshop while they attempt to repair a poor excuse for “fine jewelry.”  They find it near impossible to fix it correctly because there is no substance to it. Dad has shown me jewelry with plastic injected into it to make it feel solid. Problem is you can’t fix it when it breaks; it tends to get a bit gooey when you add a torch to it! High precious metal prices are the cause - in case you haven’t noticed gold has soared to a new high and has been above the $2,000 per ounce benchmark for some time now. This puts a curse on a lot of things in the jewelry industry; manufacturers that actually make nice quality jewelry have three choices: 

1. Raise their prices, something that will severely affect their current wholesale customers. It will cause them to either not buy at all or simply buy less at this new higher price point.                                                   

2. Re-tool and make the gold jewelry less expensive by design and making it weigh less. In other words, lighter means lower quality. That move will infuriate their current accounts, and we have personally stopped doing business with manufacturers who have done this to their line of jewelry to benefit their bottom line. This comes at the expense of their vendor and ultimately the consumer. Because when it breaks or falls apart, it becomes our problem not theirs, because they won’t stand behind what they sell. But we always stand behind everything we sell here in our shop, and always will.                                             

3. Some of the larger companies will “wait it out” and stop manufacturing “in stock” items altogether and only custom produce the orders as they come in. This tactic can be a slow but sure death to smaller Mom and Pop companies who can’t wait.

If the price stays where it is now, there will be continued cursing coming from the workshop for sure! Some of the more frequent offenders are a recurring problem I think you fellow lovers of jewelry should know. 

Many customers bring their treasures from their travels into our store. Oftentimes they will purchase an expensive ring that does not fit, having been told that the jeweler at home can size it. This is just not the truth sometimes. Invisible set diamonds for instance are put together like a puzzle. When the jeweler bends the ring they pop out like Pop Rocks. Cue the workshop cussing. We call them Cinderella rings meaning that the woman has to be the exact ring finger size. We have discontinued carrying them because most ladies have fluctuations in their weight at times and these rings are unfortunately sold under the premise they can be sized. How disappointing for the customer! We want only happy faces in our store and hate to be the bearer of bad news. 

Another ring we have stopped carrying and recommending is the diamond eternity band. This ring is beautiful, of course and surrounds the finger in decadent diamonds. It can spin around and you’ll always see diamonds. Delightful, right? No, wrong. This is another Cinderella ring that comes in one size and cannot be bent to accommodate fluctuations in weight. They’re quite expensive too, and I have been the unfortunate sales person that has to explain this bad news. Oh, how their faces fall when they realize that their ring is no longer wearable. Our solution is a wedding band with diamonds three quarters around leaving a decent sized bar of gold that allows for sizing. When properly fit, or soldered to the engagement ring, spinning is no longer an issue.

Another “new style” that is destined for damage is the new lightweight skinny look engagement ring with teeny tiny diamonds set into an almost non-existent ring shank .One thing I can guarantee about this style ring is you better have a good insurance policy because the center diamond will soon be missing in action just from simply wearing it.  

The new “micro diamond” style has become an issue lately, as I hear another customer lament over her missing diamond. The prongs are micro as well and do little to protect the teeny tiny diamond from a swift knock about in just daily wear.

Speaking of daily wear, here is a list of things not to do while wearing your precious diamond. We DO NOT recommend gardening, rock climbing, weight lifting, or especially heavy housework. We dissuade our clientele from wearing their jewelry in the ocean - sulfur from dissolving coral will discolor gold and silver - even your daily dip in the pool. Reason being, chlorine is acidic causing the precious prongs holding the diamond to become porous and brittle. One good whack and a prong can be lost very easily. Slip the ring off and keep it in a safe spot, preferably nowhere near the garbage disposal. Yes, this has happened too! Poor lady, she was beside herself and presented us with a mangled mess of gold and diamonds, beyond repair. In a battle of metal and machine, the machine won that one.